


Books and Baristas

by artisticguy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, M/M, genderfluid pidge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-18 21:18:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9403187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisticguy/pseuds/artisticguy
Summary: Keith finds himself looking for a somewhat tolerable job after college. The Black Lion Book Store sounds like an okay place to go, but when Keith meets his very unique set of co-workers, will he get more than he bargained for? Between a very tech savvy kid, loveable customer service rep and a quick witted barista, who knows if Keith will even survive his first week.





	1. What's In Store?

If someone had told Keith a month ago that he’d wind up working in a bookstore right after college, he wouldn’t have believed them. But, here he was, walking into the Black Lion Book Store for the third time in his life. Admittedly, he’d been more of a record store and Half Priced fan his whole life- with the occasional impulse buys at Barnes and Noble. However, none of those stores were hiring. To Keith, twenty two and jobless fresh out of college didn’t sound good at all. So again, here he was. 

The store wasn’t run down or anything like that, it just seemed tucked away almost. Black Lion Books was located in a little shopping district just off of the main roadways through their most up and coming neighborhoods in the city. A large and relatively well maintained sign hung over the building, giving shoppers the impression of a quaint little shop, but stepping inside proved to be rather different. 

With one more deep breath to muster his confidence and open the door, Keith sighed while looking at the neon ‘Open’ sign affixed to the window. He buried his face in his red gingham scarf with his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he pushed the door open. Even though Keith had only been here two times before, the scent of the store was familiar and welcoming- a pleasantly dizzying mixture of coffee beans and newly printed books. Immediately spread out in front of him was the large expanse of the store, bookshelf after bookshelf, countless tables and strategically placed displays. No, Black Lion Book Store was not the quaint little shop you thought it was when you saw the sign and the lack of parking outside. It was, arguably unnecessarily, huge.

Keith was trying his best to be excited about this job, but really, he didn’t know what to expect. Just as he was inhaling deeply to try and get a good whiff of the coffee he was already craving, he felt something kicking his foot. His eyes hesitantly pulled away from the store to see a robot running into his converse repeatedly. 

“Get him Rover. Get him.” A voice mumbled from behind a large display.

Confused, Keith decided to walk around the robot, heading further into the store. While walking though, he could hear the sound of wheels trailing behind him. As the robot started to run into his heel, Keith spun around and in slow motion began to act out kicking the robot.

“Oh mY gOD!” The voice squeaked from behind the display. Before Keith could even get anywhere near the robot, it was already in reverse, moving as fast as possible.

Now a face appeared from behind the display. They had messy dirty blonde hair and giant circle frame glasses. 

“Who raised you to think you can kick robots?” Their tone was indignant as they stepped out from behind the display fully now, seeming, admittedly, much less intimidating with their height and small stature. 

Keith shrugged and looked down at the robot again. It was actually pretty advanced for maybe being this kid’s engineering project or something. They couldn’t be out of high school yet, maybe even middle school?

“Hey buddy? I asked you a question.” Their tone was dry and the way they tapped their foot showed they were growing impatient.

“Shouldn’t you be in school right now or something?” 

The smaller figure in front of him seemed to be fuming now, practically red. 

“Are you Keith Kogane?” They practically spat, making Keith shiver.

Fuck, how did they know that? Oh wait.

Shit.

He nodded and looked at the angry robot fanatic in front of him.

They extended their hand, somewhat surprising Keith.

“I’m Pidge Gunderson.” Their- Pidge’s tone- was far from polite or kind. “I’m the tech coordinator at Black Lion. So kind of one of your bosses.”

Keith raked a hand through his hair as his face grew pale. He really was great at first impressions. This one seemed to take the cake for worst introduction though.

Before Keith could try and stumble through an apology, a familiar man approached them. Pidge seemed to wince a bit as Shirogane - That was his name right? Keith couldn’t really remember well from the interview.  _ Check the nametag, dumbass _ . Oh right. Right. Shirogane. Shiro for short -  got closer. He was tall and muscular- something Keith honestly hadn’t expected. People who frequented bookstores tended to be more, well, mentally fit than physically fit. Shiro also had a very defined jaw line and a face that seemed too perfect to have no makeup on it. He wasn’t really Keith’s type, but he was sure there were probably lots of people who only shopped at Black Lion in hopes of seeing this man working.

“Keith!” Shiro said excitedly as he joined the other two. “ You’re here early! Starting off your time here pretty well if I do say so myself.”

“Debatable.” Pidge muttered, eyes darting from Keith to Rover on the ground. 

Shiro looked down at the smaller blonde, shooting him a sideways glance before returning to grin at Keith. 

“This one,” with the start of the sentence, Shiro wrapped an arm tight around Pidge, causing them to pull in on themselves a bit, “wasn’t giving you too much trouble, were they?”

Keith knew the correct answer was no. That was kind of obvious. He didn’t want to already be disliked on the first day. When his eyes wandered back to Pidge, they were shaking their head aggressively. Did they really think Shiro couldn’t notice that? This person was head of the /tech/ department?

“Nope.”

Maybe if Keith just kept quiet, this job would be relatively painless.

“Great.” Shiro started, snapping Keith out of his daze. “Now, Pidge, shouldn’t you be helping Hunk with stocking in the back? Don’t make me lock Rover up.”

Pidge frantically scrambled to scoop Rover into their arms as they shrugged out of Shiro’s hold and ran back to wherever the hell the back must be. This store was too huge for Keith to know where floor displays were, let alone where the behind the scenes places like storage and the break room were.

“Come on, now that you’re here, let’s take you on the full tour.”

Keith nodded a bit shyly as he followed Shiro through the store. 

“Don’t worry about Pidge by the way, they like to mess with new employees. Did they try and tell you anything weird?”

He weighed his options on if he should snitch on Pidge to Shiro or not.

“Are they really my boss?”

Shiro immediately began laughing.

“Wow. That’s a new one. No, they aren’t your boss.”

Keith let out a sigh of relief at Shiro’s words. Still, he might have a bit of an enemy on his hands based off of the way Pidge had reacted to the potential kicking of Rover the Robot. 

“Don’t worry about Pidge,” Shiro added. “Just leave them with their robots and everything will be fine.” He smiled over at Keith, who just awkwardly nodded along. Shiro was infuriatingly attractive, so it was hard for Keith to pay attention to what his boss was saying as he basically gave Keith the rundown of the map of the store. He showed Keith section by section where things were until they were in seemingly the heart of the store. 

In said heart of the store lived customer service. Customer service was the one part of jobs that Keith had always seemed to have a love/hate relationship with. It really did depend on what clientele he was working with though, since bookstore people were probably far nicer than those at the fast food place he’d worked at during high school. Well, hopefully. Keith sighed a bit in relief as Shiro explained that Keith wouldn’t really be working customer service much unless it was Hunk’s day off. He furrowed his brows at the mentioning of Hunk and didn’t know it that was a nickname or an actual name or what. Deciding to ask the seemingly stupid question of “Who’s that?”

Seemingly appearing out of thin air, a much larger man with an orange headband wrapped around his messy brown hair popped up from inside the customer service hub. “That would be me!” He said cheerfully, as if his name tag didn’t already explain that much. “You must be Keith. Nice to meet you.” Hunk added in his cheerful tone. He seemed really polite and sweet just from one interaction, so Keith could kind of understand why they’d stuck this guy in customer service. His positivity seemed to be infectious. 

Keith nodded shyly in reply and reached out a hand to meet Hunk’s, shaking it carefully and feeling the strength of Hunk’s grip. Man this guy was big. No wonder everyone wanted to stay on his good side. 

Shiro started talking to Hunk a bit about how the customers had been for the day and asking about inventory reports or something like that so Keith further tuned himself out. He did a little personal circle, slowly turning inch by inch to get a view of the whole store. It really was big- a place a book lover could easily get lost in. He was sure many regular customers probably did. While doing his visual lap, he noticed what seemed to be Rover darting across a row of bookshelves. Keith followed where it went, until it disappeared in front of what must’ve been the cafe. 

The smell of coffee was extremely inviting and shockingly, Keith hadn’t had his routine cup of the day since he had been worried about being late to his first day of work. He turned back to glance at Shiro and Hunk to see they were still deep in conversation. They wouldn’t kill him if he snuck off the get some caffeine, right? He shrugged. If worse came to worse, Shiro would just tell him not to do it again and he wouldn’t. 

“I’m going to get coffee.” Keith mumbled halfheartedly, knowing they wouldn’t hear him as he started walking that direction. 

The coffee shop was on a raised platform to seemingly double the amount of chairs and tables they could display for customers to read, mooch off of the wifi, or just sit and drink their coffee. As Keith climbed up the little set of steps, he tripped a bit when the toe of his converse caught on the tile edging of the top stair. He heard snickering coming from the cafe and looked up, his body already tensing in embarrassment. 

His eyes met the boy that the sound had came from and it took all Keith had in him not to drop his jaw or say anything because oh man. The barista had caramel skin and messy light brown hair. He was wearing a blue and white baseball tee underneath a black apron with the store logo and barista’s name embroidered in the same color blue as his shirt on the front. His name read in that pretty blue cursive stitching ‘Lance’. The barista looked at Keith expectantly, a hand resting on his hip. 

“Are you going to stand there hoping I didn’t watch you almost bite the dust and stare at me all day? Or are you going to order something?” Lance called out, the tone seemingly teasing and almost flirtatious, along with being way too loud for working in a coffee shop inside a bookstore. 

Keith didn’t know if he wanted to turn around, say something witty back, or just ignore this  _ Lance _ altogether. He couldn’t really do any of those options though as his feet seemed to be glued to the ground. 

Lance made an obnoxiously loud yawning noise and stretched a bit, still not taking his eyes off of Keith. “I’m waiting…” He said impatiently. Jesus, did he act like this with all of his customers? Was this cafe even successful with him running it?

Slowly, Keith built up the courage to walk forward, gradually making his way to the counter. 

“So nice of you to finally join me.” Lance said with a smirk. Ugh, he seemed like a jerk and was more attractive up close. Not okay. As he now was getting a closer look at Lance, who turned to adjust one of the machines in the cafe, he could see what seemed to be the hints of writing peeking out from the drooping collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck. Did this guy have tattoos? Part of Keith immediately wanted to figure out what they were, considering he had some of his own.

“Do you like what you see?” Lance practically purred, sending shivers through Keith’s completely bundled up body, making them feel out of place. That just seemed a little too lewd at work. When Lance could tell that he had Keith’s attention, he grinned. “On the menu of course.”

Why would Keith think he’d meant anything else? He was getting so ahead of himself here, really. 

“Oh… I don’t know what to get.” Keith replied stupidly. “Do you have any suggestions?” Part of Keith just wanted to hear this asshole keep talking. Did Lance have this effect on all of his customers? Well, probably not guys. Most guys weren’t gay. Well he probably was this effective on girls- fuck- probably everybody.

Lance shot Keith a questioning glance. “Really? You can’t pick something out yourself. Yikes. Really making me work for my $8.95 aren’t you?” He scoffed a bit, causing Keith to again rake a hand through his hair nervously. How could this barista get under his skin so easily? He really was just making conversation- in an assholeish flirty way- but still.

“Are you a virgin?”

“What?!” Well that sure as hell snapped Keith back into reality. Did Lance really just ask people personal things like this? He must not make much in tips.

Lance grinned, seeming to again have used his inappropriate questions to get Keith’s attention yet again. 

“You heard me.” He said challengingly. “Are you a virgin? To heavily caffeinated beverages?”

Keith couldn’t tell if what he was feeling was necessarily relief or disappointment at Lance’s actual implications. He laughed a bit dryly.

“Definitely not a virgin.” Keith shot back confidently.

“My kind of man.” Lance replied, grinning a bit. And just like that Keith was back in this barista boy’s clutches. “So you can take something strong then?”

Man Keith was weak. He nodded in reply, watching as Lance seemed to be sizing him up. 

“I can make a mean macchiato.” Lance offered. “If you want it a little sweeter, I can make it caramel. It’s one of my signature drinks… Only the best for a guy like you.”

In this moment Keith felt like he was going to short circuit. How could someone say things like this so offhandedly. It was practically infuriating while also heavily intoxicating. 

“Okay. I’d like that. Make it large.”

Lance had a mischievous smile on his face at that and bowed back a bit. 

“As you wish.” He then started to ring Keith up, seeming to weigh his options of whether he wanted to keep up this game with Keith any longer or not. God Keith hoped he did. “Great choice, might I add. Oh well, I guess it is since I made it.”

With that somewhat narcissistic comment, when Keith made eye contact with Lance, the barista winked at him and he shivered. “I’ll get that Macchiato ready for you pretty boy. Oh wait, I might get in trouble for writing that on the cup- boss and all. What’s your name?”

“Keith.”

Lance seemed to snicker a bit, which made Keith snap out of his trance for a moment. He hated when people laughed at his name. Why did everyone seem to think it was so awful? Keith used to get mad about it and snap at his mom for giving him that name, but he really regretted acting that way once his mother passed when he was nine. 

The barista seemed to notice Keith’s glare and quickly focused back in on making the drink. “One large hot caramel macchiato for Keith.”

Keith moved to reach for it but Lance waved his finger at him first. “Impatient.” He scolded as he moved to put a sleeve on the drink. “Wouldn’t want tough little Keith to burn himself would we?”

It seemed like throughout this whole conversation Keith was desperately searching for any possible explanation as to why Lance was like this- but still he had none. As Keith took the drink and nodded at Lance, he couldn’t stop himself from slipping a dollar across the counter for a tip. Why though? He was such a jerk. Oh well, too late.

Lance appeared to be just as shocked as Keith at his actions, but grinned, happily taking the money. “Thank you. Don’t really get many tips in the bookstore.” He explained, seeming a bit softer now. “Oh? And I’d check the cup if I were you.”

With that suggestion, Keith lifted up the cup in his hands, seeing his name written in sharpie with Lance’s messy yet swooping handwriting. However, that wasn’t the only thing. In the same handwriting, Lance had scrawled his phone number with a cheesy little heart and ‘Call me’. 

If Keith wasn’t flustered before he sure as hell was now.

“Uh…”

Lance’s face faltered a bit, clearly not expecting this reaction. Clearly this wasn’t the response he typically got when he did things like this. Wait. How often did he do things like this? Probably a lot.

“You don’t ha- oh fuck.  _ Fuck _ .” Lance faltered, staring past Keith towards the rest of the bookstore. 

Keith followed Lance’s line of sight to see Shiro heading their way. 

“Shit shit shit!” The barista mumbled, crouching to  hide behind the bake case, which was kind of stupid considering it was glass. 

Once Shiro was up at the counter, he leaned over to look at Lance.

“Oh, hey… Shiro. What’s up?” The smooth, calm and collected Lance that Keith had seen seemed to have flown out the window.

Shiro had a stern expression on his face even though he was trying to hide it through a smile. “So I see you met your new coworker, Keith.”

The expression on Lance’s face would’ve been priceless if this was one of those tv shows like Pranked where Ashton Kutcher jumped out from behind a bookshelf and yelled “Gotcha!” at Lance, but this was not that kind of thing. 

“C- Coworker?” Lance looked a bit sick to his stomach as he stared at the coffee Keith still hadn’t tried in his hand.

Shiro must have noticed Lance’s line of focused and walked over to Keith, asking to see his coffee cup. Of course, Keith handed the cup over to Shiro, whose brows furrowed as he whipped back to look at Lance. 

“I told you to stop. Not only do you not listen, but you hit on a coworker? You know if Allura was here she’d kill us right? She’d have to tell corporate.”

“Fuck. I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just- I didn’t know he was my coworker.”

Keith was still standing there in silence. He felt like he was watching reality tv and not actually participating in this conversation. However, Keith did become reinvolved in the conversation when he heard Shiro threatening to throw away the coffee to make Lance make a new one.

“No.”

Both Shiro and Lance shifted to look at Keith, various levels of shocked. 

“I didn’t even get to try it. It’s fine. I’ll keep the cup.”

Shiro sighed, but handed Keith the cup. When Keith looked back at Lance, there was a small seemingly genuine smile on his face. 

If he didn’t need caffeine before, he sure as hell did now, so he took a long sip of his drink. At first he tensed at the heavy hit of the espresso at the top of the drink, but then he tasted the caramel and whipped cream mixed in with the hints of milk rising from the bottom. 

“It’s really good.” He admitted to Lance, who smiled a bit wider, the arrogant kind of confidence seeping back into his expression.

“I told you you’d like it.”

“Well,” Shiro started, snapping Keith and Lance out of their interaction, “I think that’s enough cafe for you today. Lance, don’t forget what I said. Last time. Promise me.” He gave the barista a very motherly yet authoritative look that made Lance cringe.

“I promise…” Lance grumbled, still watching Keith drink his coffee. 

“Come on Keith, let’s finish our tour. You can take your coffee with you.”

Keith nodded, following after Shiro, but letting himself glance back at Lance one last time. He finished the coffee as Shiro showed him the break room and stock room along with the rest of the store. 

When Shiro deemed their tour over, Keith was dismissed to leave with a little post-it note with his next set of shifts written on it until they set him up with the scheduling app. As Keith walked out of the building, he kept the empty coffee cup in his hand. When he got inside his car, he shut himself in and pulled out his phone.

Keith turned over the coffee cup to find the writing and carefully keyed in the phone number into his contacts- just in case. Of course, Keith would probably never do anything with the number, but Lance gave it to him, so Keith was going to keep it. Alongside Lance’s name, Keith added the stupid coffee emoji, like it mattered. He’d never use the contact and that was stupid. If Lance could see him right now, he’d laugh at him. 

Feeling as though he was getting too wrapped up in his encounter with the barista boy and not paying attention to the details of his new job, Keith put away his phone and put the empty cup in his cup holder, driving off after a debate-ably successful first day of work. 

**Who knew what Black Lion Books had in store for him.**


	2. A Cup A Day Keeps the Drama Away

The alarm went off at 7:30 Saturday morning, blaring the loudest Linkin Park song Keith had on his phone. Seriously though, he needed something that strong to wake him up. Groggily, he rolled out of his bed and onto the floor as he ripped his phone off of its charger cord to silence it. 

It had been a week since Keith’s initial introduction to the store and a week since his first meeting with Lance. Periodically during the last week, Keith found himself repeatedly thinking about the barista boy with pretty blue eyes. It bugged him. Lance was his  _ coworker _ , he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about Lance in any potential outside of work context. He remembered the way Shiro had scolded Lance about the whole phone number cup thing so maybe there was a policy against coworkers dating or flirting? It was probably somewhere in all the paperwork he did not actually read during orientation.

Keith again pushed the thoughts of Lance out of his head as he got up and started getting ready. It was an unusually warm day for this late into fall, so Keith settled for a black t-shirt with the lunar cycle phases on it and a red gingham flannel. Basically as long as Keith didn’t look like he just rolled out of bed, he could wear whatever he wanted to work, which was nice he guessed. Again because of the heat, Keith pulled his hair up into a small ponytail, knowing that if Lance saw it he’d probably be ridiculed.

There were the Lance thoughts again. Was he actually excited to see Lance at work? Well he’d have a good excuse since he was working the painstakingly slow opening shift, or so he’d heard from Pidge as they saw him leaving and interrogated him about his schedule. Keith purposefully skipped out on his routine red bull just so he could see Lance. 

Why was he letting himself get excited about seeing a guy he’d just met? Maybe it was because Lance had shown interest.

He could have texted Lance, but he didn’t.

Noticing the clock, Keith moved to put on his go to converse and was out the door. Before walking all the way down the hall of his apartment building, he backtracked to lock his apartment. Keith was a bit too forgetful sometimes and he had a book and record collection in there that would cost a fortune. 

When Shiro trotted up excitedly to let Keith in, he gave him a very chipper for 8 a.m. good morning. Keith nodded in reply and followed Shiro in. 

“The morning’s here are never really that exciting though. Honestly, these shifts just make me thankful that we get 50% off of the cafe coffee. Don’t worry about having it on the clock, as long as you keep it out of the sight of customers, it’s totally okay with us.” Shiro seemed to pause and look back at Keith for a moment, as if he was deciding whether to encourage Keith to get coffee or be disappointed in even suggesting. 

Keith’s eyes wandered over to the cafe and he started walking that way. Suddenly, he felt Shiro grabbing his elbow. 

“Hey, you can totally go ahead, but let’s get you clocked in first.”

He hadn’t even thought about that. Hopefully once he’d worked here a while everything would be habit. Keith couldn’t help but enjoy the idea of getting paid even when he was buying coffee. That sounded nice. 

Once Shiro gave Keith his lanyard and explained that Keith could decorate it, he was released to go snag coffee before reporting to the cashwrap.

Keith walked up the set of stairs, making sure not to trip this time. He immediately saw Lance and couldn’t help but wonder how their interaction would go today. However, when Lance saw Keith, his eyes darted down to the cash register, acting like it was the most interesting thing in the world as Keith got closer.

“Hey.” Keith offered.

“What do you want?” Lance asked, his voice coming out with a hint of bitterness. “For- uh- your drink I mean.” He added, maybe trying to cover for seeing the way Keith grimaced at the barista’s tone. 

“I was hoping I could get another macchiato? Or maybe you have a new recommendation?” 

Lance still refused to look up at Keith in response to that. 

“Macchiato it is.” The barista replied dryly. He rang Keith up and seemed to purposefully ignore putting the discount on the coffee.

“Oh, hey, I don’t think you punched in my discount. I didn’t give you my numbers.” The minute the words left Keith’s mouth, he had a death glare aimed right at him.

“I’m sorry, what was that? I’m pretty sure all I heard was bullshit so. It’s $6.50.” Lance replied with an extremely awful fake smile.

“I don’t get why you’re being a jerk.” Keith grumbled, still begrudgingly handing Lance the money. “What? Are you afraid of Shiro or something? Did he yell at you for that coffee cup stunt?”

It was getting to the point where Keith should probably stop talking. God why could he never stop talking when he got wound up like this? He wished he could always be stoic and silent, but no, that’s not how his selective silence worked. 

Lance had starting working on the drink as Keith was seeming to try and initiate an interrogation. The barista slammed the coffee cup down on the counter, snapping his eyes back up to Keith.

“You don’t even know me.” He practically spat, while still managing to be quiet enough for customers to not hear them. “You’ll learn I’m not scared of Shiro. And my  _ stunt _ was a mistake okay? I wish I hadn’t done it. Anyways, can you please just let me make your fucking coffee now? I’m not in the mood for twenty questions with my new, clueless coworker.”

Wow. That hurt. But why? It’s not like Keith  _ did _ know Lance. He didn’t know Lance at all. They’d only talked that one time. Still, Keith was feeling a wave of embarrassment rush over him at the bitterness the barista was showing him now.

“Is there any chance this is because I didn’t text or call you?”

The barista whipped his head up to glare at Keith. “What. Did. I. Just. Say?” It felt like each word seemed angrier than the word before it. “Look, I could care less about what you did with that coffee cup. I do that to everyone.” After the last sentence, his expression seemed to falter. 

Keith backed away from the counter, feeling suddenly way too close to Lance. So he really did do that to everyone? Clearly Keith shouldn’t have thought anything of it. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, quickly memorizing the pattern of the tiles on the cafe floor.

While Keith was caught up in trying to avoid Lance, he heard a slamming noise. His eyes searched for the sound, finding the coffee cup resting on the pickup counter. 

“Here’s your coffee.” Lance announced, a bitter edge to his words. “Oh and I drew you a pretty picture in the whip cream. You should really take a look.”

Carefully, Keith took steps towards the pickup counter. He kept his eyes on the frigid barista as he took the lid off the coffee. When he saw the design in the whip cream, for the first time in front of Lance, his expression visually faltered. Keith grimaced as he stared down at the dick drawn in caramel drizzle on the top of his coffee.

“You said you like caramel. Anyways, enjoy your shift.” Lance grumbled, having a somewhat twisted grin on his face. 

Beyond mortified, Keith put the lid back on his coffee, turning on his heels to go back to where Shiro told him to meet. When he arrived, Shiro was ringing out a customer. Keith decided that after the interaction he’d just had with Lance, he might as well drink the fucking dick coffee. Once the customer was gone, Shiro looked up at Keith and gave a tired smile.

“Was there a rush in the cafe? That took a while.” 

“Something like that.” Keith lied. “Sorry about the wait.” He added, not wanting to get in trouble on the first day.

“McClain tends to be a chatty one, but he’s the best cafe worker we’ve got- aside from Coran.” Shiro replied, seeming more like a proud father than a boss.

“Oh?”

The manager nodded. “Just let me know if he gives you too much trouble, alright?”

Of course Keith knew that Shiro’s request was really just a polite gesture, if not a joke, but he wondered if Lance had scared away employees before. Wait. Didn’t someone leave this job and that’s how Keith even got a position? It couldn’t be because of Lance, could it?

“Keith? You alright buddy?” Shiro asked, brows furrowed as he snapped his fingers close to Keith.

“Oh, um, yeah. Yes sir?” Keith replied, hoping that really fake answer was a satisfactory one.

“Well, good to hear. Now, how about I train you on registers?” 

Keith nodded and took another sip of his dick coffee, knowing he was going to need plenty of caffeine to get through boring register training for hours. 


End file.
